Max Tyrell

Max Tyrell

A musical history

As previously mentioned, I was inspired by musicians such as Brian Eno, Robbie Robertson, Peter Gabriel and Daniel Lanois in the making of my "Unseen Worlds-songs of the spirit" CD. While these artists are paramount in the creation of this particular CD, Brian Eno et al., are joined by many other musicians in having had an effect on my musical life. The full list would be far too long to cover here but a short list of some major influences may give you a more expanded view of what goes into the mix when I make the music I make. Among the many are Vivian Stanshall and the Bonzo Dog Band, Pete Townshend, Dr. John, Louis Armstrong, the Neville Brothers, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, David Byrne, the Beatles, the Wild Tchoupitoulas, the Meters, Los Lobos, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Professor Longhair among hundreds of others. What influences me is what moves me, music that captures the essence of life in some way.

My musical life began early on when I was exposed to many varied influences beginning with my older brother who played steel lap guitar with various members of the Grateful Dead and New Riders of the Purple Sage, among others. I spent many hours in the attic of my family's San Francisco bay area Victorian home watching and listening to the swaying, throbbing sounds as my brother and his friends made surreal music that they would then play at places like "the Barn" in Santa Cruz, California where some of the "acid-tests" made famous in Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" were held. The band, under the name of "The Hershey Gumbo Band" in one instance, played the Barn, a two story, well... barn, while people like Big Brother and Janis Joplin played upstairs. Playing along to tape recordings of creaking drain-pipes taken from another downtown Victorian house and stuffing microphones into socks and down wailing saxophones, my brother's band drew the majority of the crowd downstairs to their hypnotic rhythms and between sets brought bitter curses from Miss Joplin, classic liquor bottle in hand.

In fact, the house that my family moved into in downtown Palo Alto, California in the early 1960's was referred to as "the Chateau" in the Tom Wolfe book. Along with members of the Merry Pranksters and Grateful Dead my brother lived in the house just before my parents rented the property. When my family rented the house a major cleaning and painting project ensued as the place was a truly unfavorable mess. One aspect of this cleaning that had major impact upon my impressionable young mind was the discovery of spiderwebs in the refrigerator...the "beautiful" lifestyle of what were known as "the hippies" appeared to rest upon some kind of foundation of filth. It was beautiful filth though, or at least interesting and the world that surrounded us was a Fellini-like circus that I wouldn't have missed for the world. There has probably never been another place quite like Palo Alto in the 1960's. A strange, magical and unpredictable time.

While my brother was upstairs making the very tall and extremely old house (built in the late 1800's) actually sway back and forth from the volume of the band's amplifiers, downstairs my sister practiced as a classical pianist as well as playing stunning versions of ragtime tunes from Scott Joplin and the like. From these diverse surroundings I drew much inspiration and formed my first band when I was seven or eight years old. We wrote songs such as "Orange Soda" and "Kill Me Baby - Rah Rah Rah" and of course made a general racket, once claiming to the sister of one member that we had written "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" long before the Beatles had. She wasn't convinced, but we were.

In the hellish years of high school, together with musician/artist friends, I formed an extravagant band that played what could only properly and politely be called performance art rock n' roll, combining theater of the absurd and music in such a fashion as to alternately astound, dismay and amaze our audiences. The band was appropriately named "Idiot" after a passage in Shakespeare's Macbeth ("Time is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing..."). We played high school dances while dramatizing realistic knife fight scenarios between the lead singer and a large blood-bag equipped man wearing a life-like rubberized Richard Nixon mask, threw Hostess cupcakes into the crowd and crucified band members on stage. We were not your average teenagers. The band wound up playing the San Francisco club scene at the same time bands such as The Talking Heads, Blondie, Devo, etc., were hitting the city for the first time. At San Francisco's semi-legendary Mabuhay Gardens during the beginnings of the punk movement while other bands put the required safety pins through their heads, wore pseudo-military costumes and took themselves much too seriously, we demonstrated an irreverence for anything and everything. We took nothing, that was important at least, seriously and thus the band eventually disintegrated with the times.

With a couple members of idiot and our newfound friend Z Blue, I then found myself having formed Zru Vogue, an avant-garde music group that semi-improvised rhythmic and dreamy music inspired by the experimental works of Brian Eno and others. We went into a San Francisco recording studio and made a record that found it's way onto radio stations, inspired fan clubs and made it's way across the Atlantic and into the European music press. In London The New Musical Express said "...this should signal the coming avalanche of African rhythm based pop.". The world had been warned. Outlet Magazine said about the music that "Sometimes the whispers of San Francisco are more powerful than the screams of L.A.". How true. The record was eventually voted "Best Independent Single of 1981" by Sub-Pop magazine.

While the other members continued to perform and record, the original Zru Vogue became no more after various personality differences, artistic differences and difference differences lead me to move on to discover new worlds yet uncharted. I moved into the realm of film soundtracks, creating songs and scores for independent art films. Later with Andrew Jackson, I composed music to accompany high quality computer animation demonstrations like that now being seen in films like "Terminator" and "Toy Story", "Antz", etc. Meeting with cutting-edge French computer graphics artists we provided music for some of the first films for Silicon Graphics, displaying the power of the new technology. The field of film scores soon lured me to make the move from the San Francisco bay area to Hollywood, California where Z Blue and I set up camp in the celebrated Hollywood Hills, renting a very small turn-of-the-century upstairs-half of a duplex above singer Lucinda Williams and her boyfriend and next door to actor John Goodman. Down the street were the former homes of many immortal Hollywood stars including, only a few houses down from us, Marilyn Monroe's first home in Hollywood before the world had heard of her. It was a strange and amazing land.

In between composing and recording music for film trailers, documentaries and short films for clients including MGM, Orion films and more, we dodged bullets, watched riots and avoided crazed comedians. A tenant downstairs, a rather belligerent stand-up comedian from New York, had somehow managed to give the impression to the even more belligerent comic Sam Kinison, that he had been stealing some of Sam's material. Naturally, Sam showed up with two enormous henchmen and tore the front door off it's hinges seeking sufficient physical retribution while Lucinda's boyfriend hid in the closet. Ah, Hollywood - a land of movie magic and killer comedians.

In 1995 I released a new CD with Z Blue, "Bone Jar- Flowers From A Freaky World". The CD was played in heavy rotation on college radio in the United States. Internet Music Review called the CD "...a soothing combination of mellow John and Yoko, a little Everything But The Girl and a touch of Annie Lennox.". The CD has since been seen and heard by thousands of people all over the world via the Internet, with fan letters appearing in the mail from places far and wide.

Campus Circle Magazine's Jeff Matlow said in his review that the CD would " provide the boat for listeners' mind to drift off into musical bliss.". and that it "...can be played on radio as easily as anything Bryan Ferry has ever penned.". His glowing review finished by stating that the CD had "...a Robbie Robertson aura" and summed up with "I think we'll be hearing a lot about these two in the future".

We were joined on one of the CD's songs by Robin Williamson, former member of the Incredible String Band, on vocals and Northumbrian bagpipes giving a Celtic flourish to the CD's finale. We had met Robin after one of his shows and asked if he would lend his uncommon touch to the CD. We got together at his Hollywood home to go over the song and shortly thereafter recorded his parts (including long-necked cittern) at Chick Corea's Mad Hatter Studios, also in Hollywood.

In 1997 I released a self-titled CD of rock n' roll songs. CD Reviews.com said in their review of the CD that "If John Lennon were alive and young today, this is probably what he would sound like". Several songs from the CD, as well as some more of my original soundtrack compositions, appeared on the soundtrack to the independent feature film "Kinda Cute (for a White Boy)" which had it's world premiere at film festivals in London and Portugal late in 1997, and won "Best Picture" at the Savannah Georgia Film Festival in 1998.

1998 also saw a semi-reformation of the band Zru Vogue. Along with original founding member Andrew Jackson, I released the collaboration "Zru Vogue - Unlimited Enjoyment/Instant Gratification" The entire CD was done "long-distance" with Andrew Jackson and I at least 300 miles apart in two separate studios, never setting foot in the same room during the entire process. We sent tapes, lyrics and art via the mail and the internet. It started out as an experiment to see what would happen with such a setup and resulted in a CD that evokes the feel of the original Zru Vogue while portraying aspects of both of our distinct, strangely similar yet entirely different artistic personalities.

That brings us to 1999 and my new CD "Unseen Worlds-songs of the spirit", a culmination of my influences and work up to this time. This year also brings the release of the previously un-released CD "Angel Moon", recorded in 1996. Some of the songs from this CD were used in film scores and the others are heard here for the first time.

Of course, I am also currently working on new projects that will test musical waters yet undisturbed...it's always a thrill to me to see what sounds and images will appear on the unpainted musical canvas...

Included among the instruments I play (or make noises on) for the latest CD as well as on many previous recordings are; Vocals, Electric and Acoustic guitars, Dobro, Violin, Nepalese Triple Reed Flute, Bass guitar, Programming, Djembe, Clay lizard flute, Tabla, Samples, Keyboards and Electric/Acoustic Bowed Guitars.

Discography:
Zru Vogue - Nakweda Dream/Cumulonimbus (Single -1981)
Compositions for Documentaries, short films, MGM/Orion, etc. (1982-1994)
Bone Jar "Flowers From A Freaky World" (CD -1995)
Angel Moon - (CD -1996)
Max Tyrell (CD-1997)
Instrumentals (CD-1997)
Soundtrack compositions for "Kinda Cute For A White Boy" (Feature Film -1997)
Zru Vogue - Unlimited Enjoyment/Instant Gratification (CD-1998)
Unseen Worlds -songs of the spirit (CD -1999)

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